Canalce

Company: The leading online platform of employee benefit schemes in Europe, born and grown in France, the leading country for employee benefit schemes. The reason is a legal driver: since 1946 French employee benefits schemes benefit from the best regulation in Europe, forcing companies to invest 1% of their pay roll into employee benefit schemes dedicated to culture (expositions, music, books..), leisure (sport, entertainment parks and shows, health centres..), travel (pre-packaged "box" offers) and personal assistance services (child care facilities, private courses, cleaning..).

Employers subscribe to Canalce's platform to enable their employees to have access to the largest range of products and services available on the market. The employees benefit from significant discount rates (sometimes beating all possible competition) due to the employers’ subsidies and Canalce’s purchasing power and competences. The platform includes advanced management of ticketing.

Market: There are 36,000 employee committees in France representing 15 million employees and a spending budget of about 14b€. Travel, Leisure, personal assistance markets are on the rise but people increasingly seek the best price for their money. While there is a significant crisis of purchasing power in France, there is an increasing demand from households to benefit from discounts.

Transaction: Q2-Q3 2007: a French leading investor in the field of e-commerce, Banexi (Anne Valérie Bach, Michel Dahan) and CM-CIC (Stephane Pesqué, François Collet) completed a 7m€ transaction in Canalce. While a large share of it was dedicated to buying out historical shareholders, the main share was an increase in capital to accelerate growth. Three years later, the staff has more than tripled and Canalce consolidated its leadership through the acquisition of a competitor.